I have read somewhere that ISIS mostly runs on cryptocurrency now because it's harder to block.
Oh here
> They delve in weapons and human trafficking, sometimes take part in drug smuggling, more and more engage in crypto mining and frauds related to the crypto industry - the whole Islamic State is now operating by crypto, whether it’s various European countries, West or East Africa, Asia, or such weird places like Costa Rica, Brazil or Argentina.
>Estimated total impact: ~$6.3B, with ~$3B frozen on-chain so far, in coordination with our blockchain partners
I always find it amusing to read this. Why would you even bother with a decentralized currency that can move freely across the globe when some centralized institutions can always interfere in the way legacy banks used to do with your money? Either they are misguiding you about the core value of their product or their ability to execute traditional interventions in cases of theft. You can't have the conveniences of both at the same time.
You're mixing up two issues. The need for oracles is a "hard problem" but it's not the problem in this case.
USDC has a central issuer that can freeze funds because that's the only way you can currently have an asset that "looks like" dollars on a crypto ledger. Someone gets a dollar, mints a unit of the bearer token, and pinky swears they'll redeem it. It's a systemic concern that calls into question the legitimacy of the system, but that's not an oracle.
"Oracle" being the cover for crypto bros who dont want to admit they need "the legal system" to fix thier mess. Its all idiology and freedom when you are poor but once you actually own something of value, like a flat, suddenly you want lawyers and police to keep you safe from bad people.
At some point it clicked to me that crypto people don’t really care about the utility. Main purpose is creating new players in the world with immense amounts of power. In the end, it did produce a lot of rich people out of thin air, and I guess, served its purpose.
No? Cryptocurrency has a ton of utility: it simplified ransomware attacks, enabled the deployment of supplychain attacks to steal funds from unsuspecting users, made illegal gambling accessible to everyone, memecoins, efts and safe storage for any stolen or illicidly gained funds until they could be laundered and the list goes on likely exceeding the character limit.
The biggest benefit is that you can only withdraw what you need into the real world, if you gain millions of dollars you can life off that money for the rest of your life with tiny withdrawals of $2000~$5000 or so serving as a stable stream of income which allows you to have risk free investment into real-world activites that would normally strain your finances and induce sunk cost fallacy.
> At some point it clicked to me that crypto people don’t really care about the utility. Main purpose is creating new players in the world with immense amounts of power.
There are many types of crypto people. Some of them are not crypto people per se, but people who saw crypto as a means to an end. Among them, there are plenty of people who seem to be invested in sheer fraud.
It's also important to note that there are many sides to the scheme. There's for example the instant transactions side, and the long term bet in scarcity. For example, Russia has been leaning heavily on crypto to circumvent sanctions due to their invasion of Ukraine.
> In the end, it did produce a lot of rich people out of thin air, and I guess, served its purpose.
It was not out of thin air. This is literally a grift where the people holding the bag saw their money find its way to the pockets of those who got rich from it.
>the people holding the bag saw their money find its way to the pockets of those who got rich
This is the key issue. Crypto by itself created little to no actual additional value. Especially when it devolved into just another centralized currency with less government oversight. So the whole thing was a zero-sum game. People only got rich because they made others poor.
> Why would you even bother with a decentralized currency that can move freely across the globe when some centralized institutions can always interfere in the way legacy banks used to do with your money?
Regulatory arbitrage. Not all centralized institutions are fast enough to actually make use of the theoretical capabilities available to them.
> Why would you even bother with a decentralized currency that can move freely across the globe when some centralized institutions can always interfere in the way legacy banks used to do with your money?
Cheaper international transfers could be a specific valid use case. But I presume risk is too high for my taste.
I'd bet most of the frozen $3B is stablecoins and tokens with an admin freeze function. Tether and Circle can blacklist an address in minutes. Nobody can freeze BTC or ETH. So the money they got back is the part that was never decentralized in the first place, which supports your point from the other side
How do they launder the coins generally? Given you traceable (most) cryptocurrency is by design, it seems you could sanction anyone who transacts with them? I understand it's likely not that simple, though.
They deposit the coins into organisations that mix coins from various customers. Its just like a bank. You deposit a fake/stollen 100$ bill one day and, if they accept it, you can withdraw a totally different 100$ bill from an ATM the next day.
Yes, but only if the organization is cooperative. Say you are a cop in Paris investigating some shady bitcoin transactions. But the mixer is in Japan. So you spend a year getting their records, only to point to another mixer in Canada. The goal isn't mathematical untraceability, just increasing the burden on investigators to the point they move on to easier targets. There are always lots of speeding tickets that need handing out.
It's pretty much only money laundering. Supporters use the privacy euphemism but I've never heard of a legal use case for it, hence the tornado mixer sentence
It’s a pity. If he hadn’t been born in North Korea like that, he would have become a truly great programmer. My life is really hard and painful, but sometimes I think I’m better off than they are.
Maybe if he hadn't been born in North Korea he'd have lived his dream of opening a coffee shop; perhaps he got into hacking there because it's the only way to support his family.
Same unit as Bybit in Feb 2025 (TraderTraitor), and if the laptop reports are right, the same way in: one developer's machine. Bybit lost $1.5B through a compromised Safe{Wallet} dev box. Twenty months later the largest exchange in the world loses four times that, apparently the same way. I'd like to know what signing setup lets one engineer's laptop reach $6B
A guy abducts a president of a sovereign state and puts him into New York prison without any legal basis. The whole country is complicit by allowing this to happen. Yet all you can think is Putin.
Calling any of these articles “news” is something of a stretch. “Why Trump Fell in Love with Kim Jong Un”. Seriously? These are entertainment articles, at best. Where’s the Buzzfeed Top 10 Reasons Trump loves North Korea link?
1) unregulated gambling (a.k.a. "prediction markets"),
2) funding North Korea.
Heartening to see the beautiful web3 vision come alive.
Selling sanctioned oil to India and buying unguided cruise missiles from Iran, through the Gulf state laundromats.
Oh here
> They delve in weapons and human trafficking, sometimes take part in drug smuggling, more and more engage in crypto mining and frauds related to the crypto industry - the whole Islamic State is now operating by crypto, whether it’s various European countries, West or East Africa, Asia, or such weird places like Costa Rica, Brazil or Argentina.
https://saladinaldronni.substack.com/p/recent-islamic-state-...
edit:
but it seems they have mostly moved to Monero
https://gnet-research.org/2025/02/18/combating-islamic-state...
I always find it amusing to read this. Why would you even bother with a decentralized currency that can move freely across the globe when some centralized institutions can always interfere in the way legacy banks used to do with your money? Either they are misguiding you about the core value of their product or their ability to execute traditional interventions in cases of theft. You can't have the conveniences of both at the same time.
It's called the oracle problem. It's the Achilles heel of the whole idea.
And it's unsolvable. As soon as you want to trade some coin for something real, you need an oracle.
Wanna buy a flat in a world where (for argument's sake) even the ownership of that asset is tracked on a blockchain?
Let's say I come home from holidays and someone else lives there.
How do I then prove it's mine? Because it says so in some computer?
Someone has to believe that is true and let me enforce that ownership tie.
Those persons (a judge, the police, even if robots by then) are the oracle.
And a more common scenario than theft is btw legal ownership transfer.
What if I die somehow before giving the blockchain keys needed for that to someone?
How will my brother inherit the flat?
Oracle.
USDC has a central issuer that can freeze funds because that's the only way you can currently have an asset that "looks like" dollars on a crypto ledger. Someone gets a dollar, mints a unit of the bearer token, and pinky swears they'll redeem it. It's a systemic concern that calls into question the legitimacy of the system, but that's not an oracle.
they are not. The oracle is always a computer. It is a record in gov db that says you own something.
Judge and the police are the enforcers.
The biggest benefit is that you can only withdraw what you need into the real world, if you gain millions of dollars you can life off that money for the rest of your life with tiny withdrawals of $2000~$5000 or so serving as a stable stream of income which allows you to have risk free investment into real-world activites that would normally strain your finances and induce sunk cost fallacy.
Before cryptocurrency, there was no decentralized way to transfer value on the internet.
There are many types of crypto people. Some of them are not crypto people per se, but people who saw crypto as a means to an end. Among them, there are plenty of people who seem to be invested in sheer fraud.
It's also important to note that there are many sides to the scheme. There's for example the instant transactions side, and the long term bet in scarcity. For example, Russia has been leaning heavily on crypto to circumvent sanctions due to their invasion of Ukraine.
https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2025/08/russias-use-of-...
> In the end, it did produce a lot of rich people out of thin air, and I guess, served its purpose.
It was not out of thin air. This is literally a grift where the people holding the bag saw their money find its way to the pockets of those who got rich from it.
This is the key issue. Crypto by itself created little to no actual additional value. Especially when it devolved into just another centralized currency with less government oversight. So the whole thing was a zero-sum game. People only got rich because they made others poor.
I'm not sure you understand how international sanctions work, particularly the scheme imposed on Russia.
For example, read up on Russia's rupee surplus
https://www.reuters.com/markets/currencies/india-russia-susp...
Regulatory arbitrage. Not all centralized institutions are fast enough to actually make use of the theoretical capabilities available to them.
Cheaper international transfers could be a specific valid use case. But I presume risk is too high for my taste.
You're thinking of "<fraction> of <fraction>".
Would note that nobody—including probably the Kims—knows what this figure is.
At this point I don't understand - why not do this officially? They're already sanctioned to death...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumb_Starbucks
Right?
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-says-he-has-good-chem...